Scientists Invent 30-Year Continuous Power Laptop Battery

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Interesting, indeed.

 

bet it cost 30 years pay too.

 

Lol.

Good point. I mean, just look at SSDs right now...

 

Any thread of radioactive contamination?

 

$300 for 32GB.
No thanks, ill get a 7,200RPM SATA 160GB drive for less then $200.

 

But performance and reliability are through the roof with SSD's!

 

True dat.

And that's the somewhat reasonable, sorta mainstream one.

From what I remember on newegg, anything larger runs you thousands. Definitely not worth it when HDDs are perfectly fine. And the cents/GB is absolutely crazy on some of the deals floating around there... <drool>

 

Sorry about the double post.

Are you sure? HDDs have been around for decades; they're pretty well established technology that has gotten progressively faster and amazingly larger.

I think I remember one of the reviewers on here with a thread that his SSD died. I'm not so sure about "through the roof"...

I'll give you heat and sound improvement, but I haven't seen anything that says SSDs are so much better than HDDs in terms of reliability. My 160GB SATA's been running perfectly for half a decade now... Just filled up with stuff...

 

I seriously doubt it, it's incredibly simple to shield beta emissions.

 

there non-toxic

 

I really think that's what is going to power the weapons of tomorrow.

 

Contamination to the sperm bank!

 

Sweet! Sign me up...with a little luck and a freak laptop accident, I will become.....(wait for it)...THE INCREDIBLE BULK!

 

I used to work there....at least the part of it that's in New Mexico.

 

When the battery is dead its inert, thats the key point because the radioactivity has been used up. If you had an accident and broke the battery before that time tho, how strong is the radioactive force?

 

So... are they rechargeable?

 

if you keep a laptop for 30 years youre crazy. I don't see a need for recharging them

 

virtually none. the popular notion that anything Radioactive, Nuclear, or Decaying can be potentially harmful, detrimental, or unsafe is, for the most part, a myth. Of course there are certain forms of nuclear power that can be devastating, but the technological advances in this field and the different techniques used change the ball game completely when you realize that these kinds of "nuclear" cells are completely different than explosive or dangerous nuclear reactors.


Without reading the article, I'm betting this new 30-year battery is a variation of RTG's (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) that have been powering American and Russian spacecraft/satellites/landers for the better part of 40 years. Of course you'll scale it down and have to protect against chemical spills, but the technology is there - it's just a matter of shrinking it to a small enough footprint.

Still-decaying, abandoned RTG's dot the landscape of the former USSR - thousands of these power-plants are unaccounted for, and in many cases they are located right next to communities. People walk up to them, touch them, etc. without even realizing what they are - and no one gets sick (unless you do something stupid). In fact, if you know what you're looking for and you're willing to break international nuclear treaties, you can make a pretty penny "harvesting" these RTG's and selling them on the black market.

The only thing I'd think would be a problem would be the heat. any kind of nuclear decay is going to cause massive amounts of heat as it gives off energy - somehow containing or bypassing this is going to be critical.

The 30-year battery is coming in our lifetimes. And not just for laptops. Everything from cars to phones to ipods are going to use this technology.

 

this is form the article
The profile of the batteries can be quite small and thin, a porous silicon material is used to collect the hydrogen isotope tritium which is generated in the process. The reaction is non-thermal which means laptops and other small devices like mobile phones will run much cooler than with traditional lithium-ion power batteries. The reason the battery lasts so long is that neutron beta-decay into protons is the world's most concentrated source of electricity, truly demonstrating Einstein’s theory E=MC2.

 

very cool.... they've altered the chemicals traditionally used in RTG's to make them non-thermal.... going to have to read into this some more... been a few years since I last studied RTG's and chemistry....

 

I hear they automatically adjust to the life of your laptop.

So when your battery dies,

you'll know it's time for a new one .

But really, 30 years?!? It had better be interchangeable with laptop .

 

Not unless they change a lot of rules. People who had nuclear pacemakers had a hell of a time going through customs and crossing borders, etc.

Tritium (probably the source used in the betavoltaic batteries) has already been pretty much marginalized in watch dials due to serious licensing issues in Europe for manufacturers, although a few specialty makers do use it.

 

This story was debunked not long after it came out.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/02/1231202

 

If it's true .....Who will be the biggest manufactures of them. So I can buy up a ton of stocks now. LOL

Referring to Lithus link: What are the nasties if you break the battery in use?

 

Well, maybe they can tune it for 4-5 years, and hopefully it will be even smaller yet with less heat. But not sure if it works that way. If the decay rate takes it 30 years then I guess it doesn't matter how big it is.

My only concern is, as it has been with electric cars, is what do you do with all the batteries once they're no longer useful? Hopefully there will be a viable recycling program, otherwise a whole landfill with these batteries may cause problems in the future.

 

Very interesting.

I'd also like an answer to this. I understand that once it's dead it becomes inert and it isn't a problem... But what about if it breaks while still being used?

 

It depends on exactly what beta source they're using, what part of it you break, and what shielding there is in place. In general, beta particles aren't as dangerous as gamma or alpha particles, as they don't have the range or penetration power of the former, and don't have the ionisation potential of the latter. However they can still be dangerous if ingested or if you're exposed to them. Read the sections on beta decay in this:
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NRBE/NRadBioEffects.html